The table arrived…and hundreds of other boxes too!

Just a mere 83 days ago, the move to San Francisco was but a sparkle in our eyes and here we are unpacking boxes, hanging art, and cleaning floors, all to make a San Francisco walk-up into a home…together.

You know how you walk through an empty apartment thinking, I’ll put my mirror there, oh and my gigantic toaster-for-two would be perfect on that end of the counter. Well, let the negotiating begin because moving in together is a much more complicated ball of wax full of you-can-put-that-there-if-I-get-to-keep-this bargaining.

Our pile of much-missed items arrived on Friday in a full-day fiasco of begging people not to park in front of our house. The moving truck was hours late after one of the movers conveniently sprained his ankle just in time for the 4th of July holiday weekend, we wish him a rapid 3-day weekend recovery. The next three days were spent tearing into boxes, finding our long lost treasures, not finding others (like the elusive piece of glass for the bar top), and creating a dining-room-sized pile of paper and packing products – we’re accepting a $5 admission to play in it (all proceeds will go toward getting rid of it!).

Together we spent countless hours arranging furniture, measuring twice and hammering in nails once (Dan’s #1 rule), organizing the kitchen and attempting to fit our 12 appliances into cabinets (that’s right, we can make toast for six all while baking bread, blending a margarita, stewing meat in the Crockpot, mixing a cake, grinding coffee AND brewing it three ways!), and we’ve only come up with two points of contention: the angle of the knife block on the kitchen counter (which mysteriously keeps changing throughout the day), and the “girl” sheets on the bed must go. That’s all we’ve got. And, really, we’ve come to a consensus on the second one, so, one, one point of contention. WE WIN!

Second order of business, after unpacking, is always eating, so for our first meal in our apartment we made quesadillas, and our second meal was a famous Dan egg scramble, but the third meal in our very own jointly moved- into-together apartment was Sesame Shrimp and Couscous Salad from Cooking Light online.

It was fun having my sous chef back, and fun cooking in our kitchen. Not his kitchen or my kitchen, but our kitchen. A couple notes: the salad was a little dry, so we mixed up a little extra olive oil, sesame oil and, rice vinegar and poured it over the top. We substituted a couple items, in parentheses below.

Sesame Shrimp-and-Couscous Salad

YIELD: 4 servings (serving size: 1 1/2 cups)

Ingredients:
3 1/4 cups water, divided
1/2 pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 cup uncooked couscous (we used whole wheat)
1/4 cup seasoned rice vinegar
2 teaspoons vegetable oil (we used olive oil)
1 1/2 teaspoons low-sodium soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon dark sesame oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 1/2 cups thinly sliced romaine lettuce
1 cup chopped red bell pepper
3/4 cup frozen green peas, thawed (we used edamame)
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons finely chopped unsalted, dry-roasted peanuts

Preparation:
Bring 2 cups water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add shrimp; cook 3 minutes or until done. Drain and rinse with cold water; cut shrimp in half. Bring 1 1/4 cups water to a boil in saucepan; gradually stir in couscous. Remove from heat; cover and let stand 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork; cool.

Combine vinegar, vegetable oil, soy sauce, sesame oil, and garlic in a large bowl; stir well with a whisk. Add shrimp, couscous, lettuce, bell pepper, peas, and cilantro; toss well. Sprinkle with peanuts.